How to Run Effective Audits: Risk Alignment and Connected GRC Takeaways from SWERMA 2026
- Artificial Intelligence
- 15 May 26
Introduction
The global GRC market is on track to grow from $72 billion in 2025 to over $200 billion by 2033 — and it’s not hard to see why. Regulatory complexity is rising sharply across Europe and beyond, and organizations are under more pressure than ever to demonstrate that their risk and compliance programs actually work. Yet at SWERMA’s GRC Conference in Sweden, a room full of audit and risk professionals told a very different story: many of their organizations are still fighting the same old battle with fragmented systems, disconnected data, and audit processes that can’t keep pace with the risks they’re supposed to catch.
One insight stood out from nearly every conversation we had: an audit is only as good as the risks behind it. When risk data is siloed, incomplete, or captured too late, audits become rear-view exercises rather than forward-looking controls. That’s a problem worth solving, and it’s exactly what connected, AI-first GRC is built to address.
The Room Was Telling Us Something
SWERMA brought together audit managers, risk officers, compliance leads, and GRC practitioners from across the Nordic and broader European region. These aren’t people who deal in theory; they’re the ones signing off on audit reports, presenting to boards, and defending their organizations’ risk postures to regulators.
What struck us was the consistency of the challenge they described. Across different sectors and organization sizes, the same friction points kept coming up: audit teams working from risk data that’s already out of date; risk registers that aren’t connected to control testing; and compliance obligations tracked in systems that don’t talk to the rest of the GRC ecosystem. The tools exist, but they don’t connect. And when they don’t connect, the audit suffers.
The Fragmentation Problem Is Real — and Costly
It’s tempting to think of fragmented GRC as a technology problem. But it’s really a visibility problem. When compliance obligations live in one system, risk registers in another, and audit evidence in shared drives, organizations create extra work and blind spots. Controls get tested in isolation. Issues get logged without context. And by the time an audit surfaces a gap, the window to act has often already closed.
This is the GRC reality for many organizations across the Nordic and wider European region right now. Regulatory frameworks like DORA and NIS2 are pushing organizations toward demonstrated resilience. But you can’t demonstrate resilience when your risk, audit, and compliance functions are operating from separate fact bases.
Audits Can’t Be Perfect Unless Risks Are Captured Effectively
This was the sharpest observation to come out of SWERMA. No audit methodology, however rigorous, can compensate for risk data that is incomplete, stale, or disconnected from the controls it’s supposed to inform. Audit is a downstream function. What it finds is only as accurate as what the risk function has captured upstream.
When audit and risk are connected — sharing the same data, the same control library, and the same real-time view of the organization’s risk posture — audits become genuinely useful. They shift from reactive reviews to continuous assurance. Issues surface earlier. Remediation happens faster. And boards get the credible risk picture they need to make informed decisions.
Without that connection, even the most thorough audit is working with one hand tied behind its back.
The Case for Consolidation: Why Connected GRC Changes the Game
Consolidating GRC onto a single, connected platform isn’t just about operational efficiency — though the efficiency gains are real. It’s about building a risk and audit function that can actually keep up with the pace of change in today’s regulatory environment.
MetricStream’s AI-first Connected GRC platform brings audit, risk, and compliance together in a unified model — so risk data flows directly into audit planning, controls are tested continuously rather than periodically, and compliance evidence is always current. AI-powered agents can autonomously monitor risks, flag control failures, and surface issues before they become audit findings. Instead of chasing data at the end of a compliance cycle, your teams spend their time acting on insight.
For organizations navigating DORA, NIS2, or sector-specific regulatory requirements across the Nordic and European region, this kind of connected model isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation for audit readiness that holds up under real scrutiny.
What We’re Taking Away from Sweden
SWERMA was a reminder that the audit and risk community already understands the problem. Practitioners aren’t looking to be convinced that fragmentation hurts — they’re looking for a credible path to consolidation. The conversation has moved from “should we connect audit and risk?” to “how do we get there?”
If you’re ready to move beyond fragmented GRC and build an audit function that starts with risk, we’d like to talk.
Get Started: Read the Modern GRC Leader’s Guide to AI-First Risk, Compliance, and Audit
Frequently Asked Questions
A risk-aligned audit is one in which the audit scope, focus areas, and testing activities are directly informed by the organization's current, live risk data—not by last year's risk register or a static annual plan. When audit and risk functions share the same data and control library, audit planning reflects the organization's actual risk posture at the time of the review, rather than a snapshot that may already be out of date.
Audits miss risks in time primarily because the risk data they rely on is incomplete, stale, or siloed from the audit function itself. When risk registers live in one system and audit evidence lives in another, audit teams are effectively working from a delayed picture of the organization. By the time a gap surfaces through audit, the window to act on it may already have closed.
Fragmented GRC — where compliance obligations, risk registers, and audit evidence are tracked in separate, disconnected systems — creates blind spots because controls get tested in isolation, issues get logged without broader context, and no single team has a complete view of the organization's risk posture. The result is extra work, duplicated effort, and gaps that only become visible after the fact.
Connected GRC is an approach where audit, risk, and compliance functions operate on a unified platform, sharing the same data, control library, and real-time view of the organization. When these functions are connected, risk data flows directly into audit planning, controls are tested on a continuous basis rather than periodically, and compliance evidence stays current — shifting audit from a reactive review into a forward-looking assurance function.
AI-first GRC platforms can autonomously monitor risks, flag control failures, and surface issues before they become formal audit findings. Rather than chasing data at the end of a compliance cycle, audit teams spend their time acting on AI generated insight. This moves audit from a periodic, rear-view exercise toward continuous assurance — where issues are identified and remediated as they emerge.
DORA and NIS2 require organizations to demonstrate operational resilience — not just document it. That's difficult when risk, audit, and compliance functions operate from separate data sources. Organizations subject to these frameworks need audit readiness that holds up under regulatory scrutiny, which requires risk and audit data to be integrated, current, and traceable. Fragmented GRC systems make that level of demonstrated resilience hard to achieve.
Audit is downstream because it depends on what the risk function has captured upstream. If risk identification is incomplete, untimely, or disconnected from control testing, audit findings will reflect those gaps — no matter how rigorous the audit methodology. The quality of an audit is bounded by the quality of the risk data that feeds it.
Continuous assurance means that audit monitoring happens on an ongoing basis, rather than in periodic point-in-time reviews. When audit and risk are connected on a shared platform, control failures and emerging issues are flagged in real time — giving audit teams earlier warning, faster remediation cycles, and a more credible risk picture to present to boards and regulators.
Audit and risk professionals across industries are dealing with risk data that is perpetually out of date by the time it reaches the audit function, risk registers that are not connected to control testing, and compliance obligations tracked in systems that don't integrate with the broader GRC ecosystem. As regulatory pressure intensifies globally, many organizations are still operating with fragmented tools that can't keep pace with the risks they're supposed to catch.
Consolidating onto a single, connected GRC platform means that risk data, control libraries, and compliance evidence are no longer maintained in separate systems. Audit planning draws from live risk data; controls are tested continuously; and compliance evidence is always current. This gives organizations the audit readiness they need to hold up under regulatory scrutiny — and gives boards a credible, unified view of risk.
